Financial management systems and applications for electronically tracking financial transactions, balancing checkbooks, following investments, paying bills and the like have become increasingly popular as the capabilities of such programs have increased. Current financial management applications, such as Quicken® 2001 and QuickBooks® 2001, available from Intuit Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., enable users to pay bills and record and track payments and other financial transactions with vendors—whether they use checks, cash, credit cards or electronics fund transfers (“EFTs”). For example, with the electronic checkbook feature of these programs, a user may pay long distance telephone suppliers, cable television companies and other vendors by electronically preparing checks via the program's graphical user interface (“GUI”). The user can also employ the financial management system to record payments already made (whether by cash, check, credit card or EFT). Alternatively, the user can access Quicken.com or other online transactional services, to pay bills online without the use of printed checks. The term “online transaction” is used generally herein to denote any payment, purchase or other electronic activity in which transaction information is exchanged between a vendor and a user.
These systems enable a user to track the amount of money he or she spends on taxes, clothing, dining out, or other products, services, commodities or offerings, by assigning each check or payment to an appropriate category of vendors, goods or services. The user may then have the financial management system generate a report periodically to determine the amounts in each category. Many users find this feature extremely helpful for preparing tax returns or keeping within a budget.
When a user is paying bills or recording payments, whether manually or in a financial management system, using an electronic checkbook, checkbook “register,” or in an online banking setting, he may realize that he is dissatisfied with a particular vendor, or may wonder whether an alternative vendor might offer better prices or quality of service. When making a payment at an electronic “point of payment” (“POP”), or while otherwise using the financial management system (such as to record payments), the consumer is particularly receptive to offers from other vendors, or even a change of vendors. It is not difficult to imagine, for example, that a consumer paying his or her monthly long-distance telephone service bill might be dissatisfied with his current provider, and thus highly susceptible to changing providers—if only relevant pricing information could be presented to that consumer when he is paying the bill, recording a payment, or otherwise using a financial management system. The consumer might also welcome the opportunity to make known his or dissatisfaction with the provider, or to otherwise “rate” the provider. In conventional bill-paying systems, however, the user must interrupt the bill-paying session and turn to other means to investigate alternative vendors and obtain pricing, availability and other information. Similarly, to make his dissatisfaction known, he would have to contact the company directly by telephone, email, over the web, or the like. As a result, the moment at which the consumer may be most receptive to marketing and vendor switchover is lost.
In short, conventional electronic bill-paying or online banking products, whether client PC-based or online server-based, do not enable users making a payment or otherwise using a financial management system, to automatically receive or interactively request information regarding alternate vendors, goods or services. There is accordingly a need for methods and systems that enable users, while making a payment at the POP, recording a payment, or otherwise using a financial management system, to automatically receive or interactively request price, user-ratings, and other information about alternative goods, services and vendors, and if desired, to immediately switch vendors. There is also a need for systems that enable consumers to rate vendors, and vendors to target groups of consumers with advertising and promotional activities.